Conventional messaging in a network environment involves transmitting a message from one entity to another within the network environment. One well known example involves transmitting email messages across a network (e.g. the Internet) between a sending computer and a recipient computer. Oftentimes, it is desired to provide protection to these messages, which are vulnerable to interception by unintended recipients.
There are numerous well known encryption mechanisms that can be used to encrypt a message in order to provide the aforementioned protection. Generally, encryption of a message involves performing operations on the message using a specific key in order to convert that message into code. A recipient of the message, with knowledge of the key, must then decrypt the code using the key in order to regenerate the message.
In some circumstances, it is desirable to apply two layers of encryption to a message in order to provide enhanced protection of the message. To date, two layer encryption has been sequential, meaning the output of one encryption mechanism is input to another encryption mechanism. However, this technique for two layer encryption, as well as other old encryption techniques, does not work in an efficient message broadcasting scheme where a single message generated by a sender contains data to be broadcasted to a plurality of recipients as well as identifiers of those recipients. In particular, the routing server, which splits the message into individual messages each having the data but being directed towards a single one of the recipients, will not be capable of splitting the message when the recipient identifiers are encapsulated within the encrypted message.
There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.